For Patriots, the game's the same but the stakes have changed

As veteran quarterback Tom Brady says, at this point in the season next week must be earned.

Glen Farley The Enterprise @GFarley_ent

FOXBORO – The more things stay the same, the more they change.

“It just boils down to playing well,” Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said Thursday, before his team broke for its weekend bye. “It’s a football game. It’s the same thing that we’ve been doing.

“It’s just there’s more at stake. There’s no next week. I think you have to earn the right for that. It’s not about what you’ve done or what you say you could do. You’ve got to go out and do it and the teams that do it advance and the other ones, their season ends.”

The NFL’s second season officially kicks off with wild-card weekend Saturday and Sunday, the results being “no next week” for four teams in the league and sending one of three – the AFC’s lowest surviving seed between Houston (fourth), Oakland (fifth) or Miami (sixth) – on to Gillette Stadium for a divisional playoff game with the top-seeded Patriots at 8:15 next Saturday night.

“This is why we play,” offensive tackle Nate Solder said. “This is very exciting. (There are) a lot of big games coming up and we’re just really honored and proud to be here.

“We go about our business all throughout the season with a high level of intensity, so that’s nothing different now. But the excitement of it is that you win or you go home, so that’s fun and it’s high stakes.”

In the end, one of the league’s elite eight – eight teams will remain after this weekend’s games – will run the table and emerge as Super Bowl LI champion at Houston’s NRG Stadium the night of Feb. 5.

“This is what it’s all about,” Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said. “This is the highest level of competition that you can have. It’s the best teams and we’re going to have to play and coach our best.”

When last we left the Patriots, they were doing exactly that.

Sporting a 7-2 record after they returned from their regular-season bye to drop a 31-24 decision to Seattle at home, the Patriots proceeded to win seven straight, five (including the last three) by double figures), to finish 14-2 and with the top seed in the AFC. That earned them a bye on wild-card weekend, home-field advantage for Saturday night’s divisional game and, should they advance, the conference championship game on Jan. 22 as well.

“Honestly, I don’t really care where anything was during the regular season,” said Belichick. “It doesn’t matter how good it was or it wasn’t. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is where it is ... Saturday night.”